Red Light (17 page)

I had the answer, the only thing I could think of that would get any guy on the phone. I took a deep breath. “Tell Marco it’s the mother of his child.”

Hold music came on and less than two seconds later, he picked up.

“Hello? Who is this?”

“Hi, Marco, it’s Tori, Victoria Scotts. You said you had a start date for me?”

“Oh, man!” Marco laughed. “You had me scared!”

“Yeah, and you had me working, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah, I did,” he admitted. “Okay, kid, when can you start?”

“As soon as you want. I was ready to start a few weeks ago.”

He sighed. “Tell you what. Start in two days. Come in at six a.m. and we’ll get you trained, okay?”

“Great. Thanks!”

“Yeah, kid, just make sure you get the blue uniform pants. You defibrillation trained?”

“Yes.” I remembered the practical lessons and the jump of the practice dummy as the electric current passed through it.

“Good. Make sure you’ve got the right patches on your shirt. I’ll see you in forty-eight at oh six hundred.”

I’d already ordered my shield with the state seal and my license numbers on it, and I picked it up that day, along with the blue uniform pants, after I spent about two hours waiting for them to be hemmed.

It took another half an hour for me to patch my sleeve, the New York state orange and blue tombstone on the side.

Rising before the sun, I made a pot of coffee, and Samantha came down while I waited for it to brew.

“Morning,” she said.

“It sure is.”

“You know, Tori, Nina, and I were talking and, well, the garden apartment out back—you want it?”

I gawked at her. “You guys had enough of me?” I finally managed to jokingly splutter.

Samantha smiled. “No, silly, you’re always part of the family. This is your house too. We thought you might want your own space, though.”

“Wow” was the only coherent comment I could come up with.

“Oh, uh, how much do you guys want for it?” There, now that sounded like a very responsible and intelligent question.

Samantha studied the tiles on the floor before she spoke again. “I occasionally need to travel, and I’d really appreciate if you’d just watch out for Nina.”

She watched me carefully.

“That’s…that’s a given, Samantha.” I would always do that, because I loved my cousin. She’d always looked out for me, and I wouldn’t do any less for her.

“Okay,” she nodded, “that’s my only concern. So…do we have a deal?”

“Yeah, yeah, we do.” I shook her hand.

“Oh, by the way? I need a new sparring partner now that Nina’s, um, well,” Samantha grinned, “you know. You up for that?”

I grinned back. “Well, I don’t really know much about it, but I’ll give it a shot.”

“I’ll teach you, and it’ll be good for your back after the days you’re going to have.”

“You might be right,” I agreed. “You might be right.”

*

I drove over the Narrows Bridge into Brooklyn, found the ambulance garage and a parking space, then walked in. After I introduced myself at the window to the dispatcher, Barbara, she picked up a phone, hit a button, and yelled, “Marco, the fresh meat is here!” She had an interesting accent, which I soon learned was West Indies.

She put the phone back in its cradle and smiled broadly. “Welcome to hell, Ms. Scotts. I’ll be your personal tour guide for a few days.”

“You can call me Tori or Scotty. You don’t have to call me Ms. Scotts.”

Barbara leaned out the dispatch window. “Now you listen, Ms. Scotts. I may not be a big-time EMT or paramedic like you, but I know my medical, I know my patients, and I know how to give and get respect. Excuse me.” She held up a finger and sat back down, then grabbed a portable radio off the desk.

“Where’s my pick-up, six Charlie? Mrs. Sherman is an old lady, over.”

The radio crackled back at her. “We’re pulling up, Ms. Barbara, pulling up now, so keep your wig on.”

“You keep your mouth shut and I might let you keep yours,” Barbara retorted as she ticked something off in the ledger before her. “Now don’t drop anyone, over.”

Laughter trickled back through the static. “Ten-four, Barbara, and we’ll see you in thirty minutes with your coffee, over.”

“Shoulda been twenty,” she grumbled back, “and don’t forget my sugar.” She clicked off and grabbed the phone while she looked back up at me.

“Marco!” she yelled into it. “You get your ass here so we can get this girl trained!” She slammed the phone down.

“You—come back here.” She crooked a finger at me.

I walked through the door into the office, and she pointed to a clipboard on the wall. “Find your name, sign in for the very second you walked into the garage, and give me your driver’s license and EMT card,” she said and held her hand out while she picked up the radio again. “Ten Oscar, where are you? Over,” she asked into the microphone.

I pulled my wallet from my back pocket and handed her the cards as she snapped her fingers at me. Then I found the appropriate clipboard. There was my name, Victoria Scotts, with “per diem” and “6 a.m.–3 p.m.” next to it. I signed in what I hoped were the correct spaces and put my time in as 5:45 a.m.

“Lazy piece of shit,” Barbara grumbled. “That’s why Marco has no mister to his name.” Barbara glared at me, then just as suddenly smiled. Since her expression seemed to be directed past my arm, I looked behind me to see what had caused it.

A woman walked past the dispatch window and through the door with an arrogant slouch, her hair a solid brown and slightly longer than mine, her belt hung just so over her hips, a sullen-red stethoscope flung around the collar of her jacket, and a bright orange tech bag slung over a shoulder.

“Ah, Ms. Barbara, my love, when are you gonna tell that lazy-ass husband of yours about our hot affair and let me take you away in style?” she deadpanned as she signed in on a clipboard.

“What? Leave all this glamour behind? Maybe when you get your big-time medic job with the city,” Barbara joked back as the phone in front of her lit up like fireworks on a hot summer night and each line screamed for attention.

“Hey, as soon as they call me, I’ll come get you.” The woman laughed, then turned her attention to me. She appeared to be almost six feet tall and very fair skinned, with a dusting of sprinkles across her cheeks. She was very pretty, and I estimated her to be about twenty-five, maybe twenty-six years old. And boy, she had some shoulders—I wondered if she’d developed them on the job. The name tag above her breast said “Scanlon.”

“Fresh meat?” she asked me, a friendly curve lighting her face. Dark brown eyes inspected me from an expression that read “good people.” I liked her right away.

I shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Nice Sprague, good color.”

“Thanks.” I smiled and held out my hand. “I’m Tori Scotts.” I didn’t know if she had good hands yet, but she had a good handshake. “But everyone calls me Scotty.”

“Well, Scotty,” she answered, “I’m Jean, and everyone will tell you I’m the psycho dyke bitch, so just leave me alone and we’ll be fine,” she said with a smile that told me not to take her words too seriously.

A blond guy with a crew cut came through the door and trudged over to the sign-in wall.

“Well, Jean,” I answered as he walked past me, “I’m just a dyke EMT.”

“Cool.” She nodded, her smile even brighter. “Very cool.”

“Oh, great,
another
one?” the guy muttered from the clipboard where he signed in.

Barbara wheeled her chair over and shoved my cards back at me. “Chuck, you’re just jealous because she does better work with her pee-pee than you,” she snapped at him as I tucked my licenses back into my wallet. “And you? Just a dog.”

I tried hard not to laugh when Jean barked, then snapped her teeth at him. Chuck just shook his head and scowled.

“You, Ms. Scotty, you ride with Ms. Psycho-Bitch Scanlon and Up-Chuck here,” Barbara jerked a thumb at him, “and I want you back tomorrow for the ten a.m.”

“Okay, sure.”

“Oh, Barbara, I thought it was you, me, and my pee-pee tomorrow at ten,” Jean teased with a dramatic eye roll.

“I’ll pick the position, you pick the color.” Barbara grinned at her, then glanced around at all of us. “Well?” Her expression changed instantly from mirth to mock fury, “What are you all still doing here? Get out of my office!” she snapped, and we hustled out as the phones rang madly.

*

The days passed quickly, and I crawled into bed at the end of every shift, grateful to sleep. Most of the work consisted of medical transports, dialysis patients that needed to be monitored to and from their appointments, hospital-to-hospital transfers (and some of those were very interesting because of the complications involved), as well as true emergencies from nursing homes or the occasional flag-downs from MVAs.

I met some of the other crews on a few shifts and worked with quite a few of them as I rotated through. Chuck had been right: just about all the girls were gay, and at least half of the guys too. It was amazing to watch: affairs ran rampant between crews, within crews, inter-shift, and high drama exploded whenever certain pairs ran into others, gay or straight, either in the emergency room or at a dialysis center.

The day crews tended to be circumspect about who was with whom, but those overnight crews? You could always tell which new pairing had formed and which had ended by watching the schedule change: a new person to the day with weepy eyes over the next week or so, contrasted with a happy new person on an overnight. Well, it didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out the logistics. Besides, the overnights were almost dead quiet, which left plenty of time for two bored people to become friends, and more, if that’s what they were into.

A night rig could park almost anywhere it wanted, so long as it wasn’t too far from the base or out of range for a call from dispatch.

One night during dinner I told Trace about the crazy relationship dynamics at the base; I’d picked her up after her shift and had the next two days off.

“It’s a lot like junior high school, but instead of who held whose hand, it’s sex,” I said.

“So, anyone you’re interested in?” she asked with a sly smile.

“What?” I was incredulous and certain my reaction reflected in my voice, if it wasn’t obvious on my face.

She put her fork down and slid out of her seat to glide over to me, her hips a dangerous sway as she neared. My heart began to pound, and I wasn’t completely certain if I was afraid or aroused.

She threw a long leg over mine and sat down.

Her touch was delicate when she took my chin in her hands. “I don’t care,” she said softly, then kissed me, “who you fuck,” she finished as she first rolled my now-hard nipple under her palm before she let her hand rest on my crotch.

My clit was even harder under the pressure of that hand as she unzipped my pants for access, then began to jerk me off in earnest as her tongue tangled again with mine.

I couldn’t help myself or my reactions, because she had me so wet and so ready, and I reacted automatically: reached for the knot of her scrubs, eased my hands beneath the thin cloth to stroke her clit with one and explore her more intimately with the other, and slipped my fingers along the sodden furrow and gently teased her.

“Really?” I asked breathlessly, “you don’t care?”

“God…” she groaned as I entered her fully and her cunt held me, a suck on my fingers that made me swell under hers. “I don’t,” she whispered hotly in my ear as she played my clit expertly and teased me in return, making me squirm beneath her while I pumped her firmly, “so long as you think of me—”

Oh, my God, she was making me wait, wait for her to fill me. “Trace…” I growled in her ear. “You’re killing me—”

“Yeah?” Her voice was a harsh whisper as she slid partly into me. “You want this, baby?”

I inhaled sharply and pushed against her, then stilled my fingers slightly. “You stop…I’ll stop,” I promised as her cunt tightened around me, urging me to continue.

“Mmph…can’t have that.” Trace shifted her hips off me and slammed back down, on me, in me, grinding her hips against my thighs.

“Shit…yeah!” I agreed because she felt good, everywhere.

She rode me in earnest and I stayed buried in her cunt while her clit slicked along between my fingers and she took me where I needed to go.

“Gonna come…” The words ripped out of my throat.

“Good,” she groaned. Her cunt tightened around me further, and I swear her clit throbbed harder, bigger, as she fucked me.

“Come…come any way, with anyone, you want,” and she breathed between each word, “just think of me.”

“Thinking of you…right now,” and I did.

*

We managed not to wreck any furniture, and Trace had me again before midnight, flat on my back and riding my dick, and this time, she held my arms back over my head as I fucked her, which was…different. It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t bad at all, but I still had that faint red bruise on my chest, and this time when she bit me, in the hollow next to my collarbone, she drew blood.